Follow Blog via Email

Beer 12: unique Black IPA

Most black IPAs are nothing more than IPAs with black color. For example, add some dehusked Carafa II. I didn’t want that. I also didn’t want a super tropical, citrus IPA, because I think the dark color doesn’t match the flavor. So I added a pound of Roasted Barley and picked hops with more depth, like Summit: spice, earthy, onion, garlic and citrus. And Glacier, described as ‘herbal’ and ‘woody’. I wanted a malty, complex, yet hoppy IPA for the winter. This did not disappoint.

It’s brown in color, and tastes sorta like a hoppy Brown (or is the color telling me that?), but I get a clear roast character (Brown’s don’t have Roasted Barley, as far as I remember). Anyway, it has a big pleasant hop aroma, from the Centential and Simcoe I’m guessing, and the complex hop flavors blend nicely with the three malts. It’s good. This is still very young, I think it will peak in a week or so.

notes
let sit outside for 20 minutes in cold weather, got down to 175F
Put in cold fridge, next day at 2:00 it was down to 95F
Nov 22: forgot to pitch last night, so pitched in the morning @65F
11/23: noticed krusen foaming
11/27: gravity is 1010, raised temp from 65 to 70
11/28: cold crashed and dry hopped
11/29: down to 48F
12/1: bottled 64 beers

Super Fast Carbonation…I’m confused now
This beer magically carbonated in 4-5 days. That was after cold crashing and using gelatin. If you recall, many of my other beers have taken 2 weeks, 3 weeks, even 4 weeks, which has been a real pain. For example I’ve been waiting on a Belgian Dubbel for over 3 weeks now…still flat). I think length of cold crashing has something to do with it. The longer you cold crash, the longer to carbonate. The Belgian beer was cold crashing for over a week; the black IPA, only a few days. OR the black IPA didn’t ferment completely, in which case it will be over-carbonated in a week – hope not. I’m actually considering going back to the old days of not cold crashing or using gelatin.